


Alouette

by anactoria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angelic Grace, Gen, Jossed, Post-Episode: s11e01 Out of the Darkness Into the Fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 19:49:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5018059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heaven sends Hannah to deliver its justice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alouette

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a coda to 11.01, with the speculation that the angels who grabbed Cas weren't actually working for Heaven, but didn't get around to posting it before it was Jossed. But I'm mad enough about 11.02 to want to post it anyway.

She finds Castiel in Detroit.

Wreckage of a disused factory in a disused industrial district, scorched remnants of weeds bristling from cracks in the concrete. Twisted steel girders stick out from the mess of fallen masonry and mangled machinery, ribcages of megafauna burst from the inside out. Every age has its beasts.

If she were to sift through the rubble, she would find chunks of concrete with the outlines of feathers charred into their surfaces. 

None of them Metatron’s, though it was his allies who took Castiel before Heaven could step in. He has always been a serpent. Tasting the air for danger and slithering away, leaving his underlings to bear the consequences of his ambition. Hannah remembers his contempt oozing over Heaven’s airwaves. Wonders, with a heaviness that belies her wondering, how any angel can bear to join forces with him again.

The air here is heavy with distress, coppery on the back of her borrowed vessel’s tongue. A tendril of something darker curls through it, a smell of ash and blood and bitter herbs. Magic.

Hannah tightens her grip on the vial in her vessel’s pocket.

When she reaches Castiel, he is cowering under the lower flight of a half-crumbled staircase. At the sound of her footsteps, he makes a breathy, frightened-animal sound and tries to tuck himself further into the shadows. The outline of his true form is a faint, staticky fuzz in the air. Hannah reaches out to it with a thought of reassurance and sees it try to shrink.

She stoops until she can see his eyes in the dark. “Castiel. It’s me.”

Despite everything, the look on his face softens. “You shouldn’t come any closer,” he tells her. “I couldn’t—I didn’t mean to.”

She ignores his warning, crouching and fitting herself under the staircase to sit beside him. “Those angels were rogues. They were working with Metatron.”

“I still didn’t mean to.”

“Do you know what they wanted with you?”

Castiel shakes his head; looks away.

Hannah nods—in sympathy, if not understanding. “Are you okay?”

He turns on her a look of pure human exasperation—just for a moment, before it gives way to something else. Tireder, more peaceful. 

“Dean Winchester is saved,” he says, then.

An old echo; one that rings with irony. Hannah knows it isn’t for her benefit. The unspoken addendum, though—that just might be. _Dean Winchester is saved. And that’s enough. You understand._

She lays her vessel’s hand on Castiel’s shoulder. He starts a little, stares at it, but does not shrug it off. 

She should tell him now. 

Something in his expression catches at her, makes the words stick in her vessel’s throat. 

When she let Caroline go, she thought she had freed herself from emotional distractions; but she has come to realize it isn’t that simple. It is never that simple. 

(A blade in her hand (Caroline’s hand). _Punish him_. It looked that simple at the time. The human world, with its intimate histories, complicates things. She knows that now. Then, love and justice were discrete, abstract quantities; their incompatibilities yet to be felt.)

Hannah reaches into her jacket and pulls out a vial instead of a weapon. She holds it out.

Castiel blinks. His eyes reflect the pale opalescent glow of the sap inside the vial. He reaches out, a slow, hypnotized movement, but pulls his hand back before his fingertips touch the glass. Then he turns his head sharply and stares at her. “From the Garden?”

She nods. “It will cure you.”

His eyes narrow. “On whose authority?”

“Mine,” Hannah tells him, and omits to mention that she has none. She is a facilitator, a spokesperson—not a commander. Heaven does not have those anymore. It is more difficult than she thought it would be.

Castiel hesitates a moment longer before he takes the vial. He tilts it one way, then the other, his head following the movement as though he is mesmerizing himself. Finally, he twists off the top and swallows back the contents.

He is still for a moment. A part of Hannah freezes in answering apprehension. Every angel knows the Garden holds cures for all manner of ills, supernatural and otherwise, but few have ever seen them used. For the space of a breath, she doubts it.

A shudder runs through Castiel, then. He drops the vial and Hannah darts out a hand to catch it before it can shatter on the ground. She does not look away from his eyes.

The red drains from them slowly. The shimmer of magic surrounding him dissipates, his true form coming back into view, the ashy smell clearing from the air. His whole vessel sags with relief.

He raises his hands, then. Wrists held together as though he is expecting to be cuffed. The gesture of one who has occupied a human body too long, for whom Heavenly methods are no longer even second nature. “You can take me back now.”

Hannah swallows. Her vessel’s fingers tighten convulsively around the vial. “The Council has already made its decision.”

Castiel peers at her. “There’s a Council?”

“We’re trying new things.” She pauses to center herself. Concentrates upon the even rhythm of this vessel’s breathing, slower and deeper than Caroline’s. The beat of its heart, the thrum of its blood. They don’t help. 

“And what is Heaven’s will?” There might be a trace of sarcasm in it, but if so, it’s buried deep under resignation. 

_Punish him._

The angel blade drops from her vessel’s sleeve, almost independent of her volition.

Castiel just nods. Not even a flinch. No sign that he’s considering resistance. A flicker of regret, maybe—and she can guess for whom that is—but it’s muted, like everything else. 

_Dean Winchester is saved, and that’s enough. I just wish I got to see it._

Her vessel’s hand shakes as she presses the point of the blade to his chest.

 _Punish him._ The memory of her voice (Caroline’s voice), cold and sure.

“I understand,” he tells her. 

“Do you?”

_Punish him. / I can’t._

There’s nothing but sincerity in his eyes. “Yes.”

Hannah draws cool air into her vessel’s lungs. The point of her blade rests between two shirt buttons, shivering against Castiel’s skin.

She thinks again over the words of the verdict. _Castiel is a danger to us all. Imprisonment is not a solution. We have to remove him—permanently._

Slowly, she lets the hand holding the blade fall. She holds out the other one instead. The one with the empty vial.

Castiel stares at it. Understanding seems to take him a moment.

He closes his eyes, then. “Do something good with it,” he says. 

He lets his head fall back, baring his throat. She raises the blade.

 

\----

   
The walls of Heaven’s High Court seem to rise forever. Pale light pours down from on high. The members of the Council look back at Hannah with unblinking eyes.

She touches the vial in her vessel’s pocket. It thrums against the fingers, coolly alive.

“Is it done?”

She looks straight back at the spokesmen. “The angel Castiel is no more.”

It is not entirely a lie.

 

\----

   
She holds on to the vial for a time. _Do something good with it_. It needs to be something Castiel would consider good; but it needs to be something she can live with, too. She will not waste it.

When the first thin tendril of Darkness curls its way past Heaven’s borders, she finds herself reaching into her pocket again, curling her vessel’s fingers around the vial. 

A vibration through the glass. It feels like the touch of a friend’s hand. She holds on tight to it and wonders.

 

\----

   
Days pass before the next incursion. Only hours before the one after that.

Hannah makes her way to the Garden quickly but cautiously, her face set against the crowds rushing to take up their posts, determination in her vessel’s stride. 

The Garden is the center of Heaven. The place from which all Creation springs. To feed the essence of an angel into such a powerful place is a risk. She does not know quite what it will do.

She thinks about asking for guidance. If there was a time for her Father to step in, then surely this is it.

She thinks of Castiel, then—Castiel who is somewhere below her now, lost amid the chaos. How he cowered in the ruins, sure of his death, still telling her, _Dean Winchester is saved._ How Caroline screamed inside of her to see her husband’s grief. How many voices down there are screaming, now.

Love. Dreams. Human things. The Darkness curling its tendrils across the earth.

Hannah stoops and scoops up soil with both hands. It is damp, the smell of it rich and loamy. 

She unstoppers the vial. Pours light into the Garden.

And then— _then_ , she prays.


End file.
